语言学教程第一章总结

1115101044 李素萍

Chapter1 Invitation to Linguistics

1.1 Why Study Language?

Language is such an integral part of our life and humanity that too much about it has been taken for granted.

Language plays a central role in our lives as individuals and social beings.

1.2 What Is Language?

Language is the systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs or written symbols in a human society for communication and self-expression.(David Crystal, 1992)

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.(Ronald Wardhaugh)

To give the barest of definition, language is a means of verbal communication. In short, language distinguishes us from animals because it is far more sophisticated than any animal communication system.

1.3 Design Features of Language

Arbitrariness

Arbitrariness means that the form of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their sound and meaning. The dog barks wow wow in English but “汪汪汪” in Chinese.

Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning. Arbitrariness at the syntactic level. language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.

The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention. Duality

The property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization:

Primary units ‘words’ (meaningful) consist of secondary units ‘sounds’ (meaningless).

Creativity

Language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. We can use it to create new meanings.

Words can be used in new ways to mean new things, and can be instantly understood by people who have never come across that usage before. Information imparted by animals is severely limited and confined to a small set of messages, as birds, bees.

Because of duality the human speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard.

Language is creative in another sense,that is, its potential to create endless sentences.

Displacement

Human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication. Thus, we can refer to Confucius, or the North Pole.

In a word, intellectual benefits of displacement to us is that it makes possible for us to talk and think in abstract terms.

1.4 Origin of Language

The”bow-wow”, the” po oh-pooh” and the” yo-he-yo” theory

1.5 Functions of Language

Linguists talk about the functions of language in an abstract sense, that is, not in terms of using language to chat, to think, to buy and sell, to read and write, to greet, praise and condemn people, etc.

For Jakobson, language is above all for communication.

While for many people, the purpose of communication is referential, for him (and the Prague school structuralists), reference is not the only, not even the primary goal of communication.

In conjunction with speaker, addressee, context, message, code, contact, Jakobson established a well-known framework of language functions based on the six key elements of communication, namely:

referential (to convey message and information), poetic (to indulge in language for its own sake), emotive (to express attitudes, feelings and emotions), conative (to persuade and influence others through commands and requests), phatic (to establish communion with others)，metalingual (to clear up intentions and meanings).

Halliday proposes a theory of metafunctions of language, that is, language has ideational, interpersonal and textual functions.

Informative function(ideational function)信息功能

Language is the instrument of thought and people often feel need to speak their thoughts aloud.

Language serves for the expression of content and give helps to determine our way of looking at things.

Interpersonal Function人际功能

By far the most important sociological use of language, and by which people establish and maintain their status in a society， e.g. Dear Sir, Dear Professor, Johnny, yours, your obedient servant.

It is concerned with interaction between the addresser and addressee in the discourse situation.

Performative Function施维功能

Language canbe used to do things, to perform action.

It is primarily to change the social status of persons and is usually quite formal and even ritualized. For example, in Chinese when someone breaks a bowl or a plate the host or the people present are likely to say sui sui ping an. Emotive Function感情功能

It is one of the most powerful uses of language because it is crucial in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something.

It is a means of getting rid of our nervous energy when we are under stress, e.g. God, My, Damn it, What a sight, Wow, Ugh, Oh.

It is also discussed under the term expressive function. The expressive function can often be entirely personal and totally without any implication of communication to others.

Phatic Communion寒暄功能

It refers to the social interaction of language.

We all use small, seemingly meaningless expressions to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without involving any factual content. Ritual exchanges about health or weather such as Good morning, God bless you, Nice day often state the obvious.

Recreational Function娱乐功能

The recreational function of a language is often overlooked because it seems so restrictive in purpose and supposedly so limited in usefulness

The use of language for the sheer joy of using it, such as a baby's babbling or a chanter's chanting.

Metalingual Function元语言功能

Our language can be used to talk about itself, for example, I can use the word book to talk about a book, and I can also use the expression “the word book” to talk about the sign “book” itself.

1.6 What Is Linguistics?

Linguistics is usually defined as the scientific study of language or, alternatively, as the scientific study of language. Linguistics is a rich and exciting field.

Linguistics has firmly established its place as a major branch of humanities and social sciences as well.

1.7 Main Branches of Linguistics

Phonetics语音学

Phonetics studies speech sounds, including the production of speech, that is how speech sounds are actually made, transmitted and received, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech, etc.

Phonology音系学

Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. It deals with the sound system of a language by treating phoneme as the point of departure.

A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of sound that can signal a difference in meaning.

Morphology形态学

Morphology is concerned with the internal organization of words. It studies the minimal units of meaning — morphemes and word-formation processes. Syntax 句法学

Syntax is about principles of forming and understanding correct sentences. Semantics语义学

Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a language.

Pragmatics语用学

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in particular context. In other words, pragmatics is concerned with the way language is used to communicate rather than with the way language is internally structured.

1.8 Macrolinguistics

Other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, ethnography, the science of law and artificial intelligence etc. are also preoccupied with language.

Psycholinguistics心理语言学

Psycholinguistics investigates the interrelation of language and mind, for example, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition. Sociolinguistics社会语言学

Sociolinguistics is the study of the characteristics of language varieties, the characteristics of their functions, and the characteristics of their speakers as these three constantly interact and change within a speech community. Anthropological Linguistics人类语言学

Anthropological linguists are interested primarily in the history and structure

of formerly unwritten languages.

Computational Linguistics计算语言学

Computational linguistics centers around the use of computers to process or produce human language(also known as “natural language”, to distinguish it from computer languages).

To this field, linguistics contributes an understanding of the special properties of language data, and provides theories and descriptions of language structure and use.

1.21.What are synchronic and diachronic studies?

The description of a language at some point of time (as if it stopped developing)

is a synchrony study (synchrony). The description of a language as it changes through

time is a diachronic study (diachronic). An essay entitled “On the Use of THE”,

for example, may be synchronic, if the author does not recall the past of THE, and

it may also be diachronic if he claims to cover a large range or period of time wherein

THE has undergone tremendous alteration (see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp25-27).

1.2

2.What is speech and what is writing?

No one needs the repetition of the general principle of linguistic analysis, namely, the primacy of speech over writing. Speech is primary, because it existed

long long before writing systems came into being. Genetically children learn to speak before learning to write. Secondly, written forms just represent in this way or that

the speech sounds : individual sounds, as in English and French as in Japanese.

In contrast to speech, spoken form of language, writing as written codes, gives

language new scope and use that speech does not have. Firstly, messages can be carried

through space so that people can write to each other. Secondly, messages can be carried

through time thereby, so that people of our time can be carried through time thereby,

so that people of our time can read Beowulf, Samuel Johnson, and Edgar A. Poe. Thirdly,

oral messages are readily subject to distortion, either intentional or unintentional

(causing misunderstanding or malentendu), while written messages allow and encourage

repeated unalterable reading. Most modern linguistic analysis is focused on speech,

different from grammarians of the last century and theretofore.

1.23.What are the differences between the descriptive and the prescriptive approaches?

A linguistic study is “descriptive” if it only describes and analyses the facts of language, and “prescriptive” if it tries to lay down rules for??“correct” language behavior. Linguistic studies before this century were largely prescriptive

because many early grammars were largely prescriptive because many early grammars

were based on “high” (literary or religious) written records. Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, however. It (the latter) believes that whatever occurs in natural speech (hesitation, incomplete utterance, misunderstanding, etc.) should be

described in the analysis, and not be marked as incorrect, abnormal, corrupt, or lousy.

These, with changes in vocabulary and structures, need to be explained also.

1.24.What is the difference between langue and parole?

F. de Saussure refers “langue”to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and refers “parole” to the actual or actualized

language, or the realization of langue. Langue is abstract, parole specific to the

speaking situation; langue not actually spoken by an individual, parole always a

naturally occurring event; langue relatively stable and systematic, parole is a mass

of confused facts, thus not suitable for systematic investigation. What a linguist

ought to do, according to Saussure, is to abstract langue from instances of parole,

i. e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make than

the subject of linguistics. The langue-parole distinction is of great importance, which casts great influence on later linguists.

1.25.What is the difference between competence and performance? According to N. Chomsky, “competence” is the ideal language user’s knowledge

of the rules of his language, and “performance” is the actual realization of this

knowledge in utterances. The former enables a speaker to produce and understand an

indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.

A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factor s. So a speaker’s performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence.

Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. In other words, they should discover what an ideal speaker knows of his

native language.

Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as , though

similar to , F. de Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product,

and a set of conventions for a community, while competence is deemed as a property

of the mind of each individual. Sussure looks at language more from a sociological

or sociolinguistic point of view than N. Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues

psychologically or psycholinguistically.